Senior Software Engineer, Data Platforms

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

A few reasons why we think you’d love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

• Building the future of Disney’s media business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
• Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.
• Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

The Product & Data Engineering team is responsible for end to end development for Disney’s world-class consumer-facing products, including streaming platforms Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, and digital products & experiences across ESPN, Marvel, Disney Studios, NatGeo, and ABC News. The team drives innovation at scale for millions of consumers around the world across Apple, Android, Smart TVs, game consoles, and the web, with our platforms powering core experiences like personalization, search, messaging and data.

Job Summary:

The Data Platforms Team, a segment under the Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology (DEET) organization is looking for a Sr. Software Engineer to join our Big Data Applications team. Big Data technology is critical to improving products in the DEET Portfolio because it allows us to quantify content performance, measure advertising effectiveness, help users discover new content, detect fraud, and track user journeys. Overall, this data enables us to better understand the user experience so we can continue improving our service for our users, advertisers, and content partners. Our Big Data Applications Engineering team is seeking a highly motivated Software Engineer with a strong technical background who is passionate about designing and building systems to process data at scale, solving challenging problems in both batch and real-time data processing, and working across software and data disciplines to engineer solutions. Our tech stack includes AWS, Databricks, Airflow, and Spark, and primary languages are Scala and Java.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Contribute to the design and growth of our Big Data Products and Services, enabling evaluation of product performance and user behavior
• Design and develop scalable data warehousing solutions, building ETL pipelines in Big Data environments (cloud, on-prem, hybrid)
• Work on systems to query, process, and deliver data out of the analytics environment into internal tools and systems
• Collaborate on architectural designs and help plan for maintainability, observability, and future development concerns
• Maintain detailed documentation of your work and changes to support data quality and data governance
• Ensure high operational efficiency and quality of your solutions to meet SLAs and support commitment to our customers
• Be an active participant and advocate of agile/scrum practice to ensure health and process improvements for your team

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

• 5+ years of software or data engineering experience
• Experience developing data pipelines using technologies such as Spark, Hadoop, Databricks, Airflow
• Experience with developing for a cloud environment (AWS preferred), including cloud databases (Snowflake, Redshift, Databricks Delta Lake)
• Knowledge of both SQL and NoSQL databases
• Strong programming skills in Java, Scala or Python
• Demonstrated competency in data modeling and analysis techniques.
• Strong attention to detail and excellent analytical skills
• Verbal and written communication skills and ability to collaborate with others effectively.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with at least one major Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) or cloud database technology (Snowflake, Redshift, Big Query)
• Experience with scalable online analytical processing databases (Druid, ClickHouse)
• Experience working with a test first mentality.
• Deep Understanding of AWS or other cloud providers as well as infrastructure as code
• Familiarity with Data Modeling techniques and Data Warehousing standard methodologies and practices
• Familiar with Scrum and Agile methodologies

Required Education  

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

The hiring range for this position in Seattle is $142,600 - $191,100 per year and in Los Angeles is $136,038 - $182,490 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.